Archives for category: Network for Public Education
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Do You Know the Richest Woman in Your State?

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2014 //
37

This is a pictorial graphic that shows the richest woman in every state.

 

Do you know any of them?

 

The Network for Public Education is looking for an angel who will help us fight corporate reform. We are trying to defend public schools, teachers, and children from predatory takeovers by powerful special interests.

 

We would love to find a billionaire who loves public schools.

 

We would actually be happy to have the help of the second or third or tenth richest person, woman or man.

 

Until we find that person, we will continue to count on your help with whatever you can afford.

 

We are not especially well-funded (we are not well funded at all), yet we are beating back the billionaires. Why? Be ause we have the strength of our numbers, including you. We speak for 5 million teachers and for the families of about 45 million students, give or take a few million. With all their billions (of dollars), they can’t beat our millions (of people).

 

And we are winning because we care about principle, not profit. We believe that right makes might, that failing “reforms” will be exposed as frauds and scams, and that in a democracy, the truth eventually prevails.

Categories Network for Public Education

Education Bloggers’ Network Grows to 200

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2014 //
12

Jonathan Pelto of Connecticut has done an amazing job of assembling a network of 200 bloggers and writers who support public education. That number is sure to grow as more parents and educators join the blogosphere.

Jon’s blog “Wait, What?” Is one of the most influential blogs in Connecticut.

Those who seek to privatize our public schools have vast amounts of money (the big foundations created their own blog, funded at $12 million), but we have bloggers and writers who are passionate and dedicated to the democratic role of public schools as a public good that belongs to the public, not corporations.

Jon Pelto writes:

Education Bloggers Network Hits 200 Members

The Education Bloggers Network is an informal confederation of more than 200 bloggers and commentators who are dedicated to supporting public education in the United States and pushing back the corporate education reform industry. While many have their own blogs, some write commentary pieces for local, regional and national newspapers and media outlets. Still others use their Facebook or other platforms to write about education issues.

Like the Committees of Correspondence leading up to America’s War for Independence, education bloggers work alone and in groups to educate, persuade and mobilize parents, teachers, education advocates and citizens to stand up and speak out against those who seek to undermine our public education system, privatize our schools and turn our classrooms into little more than Common Core testing factories.

The Education Bloggers Network was developed in conjunction with the publication and roll-out of Diane Ravitch’s best-selling book, “Reign of Error.”

Over the past two years it has become a vibrant community of advocacy journalists, investigative bloggers and public education activists working to make sure that citizens have accurate and timely information about public education issues at the local, state and federal level.

The Education Bloggers Network is not about controlling editorial content but sharing information, helping bloggers enhance their platforms and provide expanded venues so that their articles garner greater readership.

For example, the Education Bloggers Network works closely with the nationally renowned Progressive Magazine and a number of Network members have their articles and commentary pieces cross-posted to Public School Shakedown a website hosted by the Progressive.

The Education Bloggers Network also works closely with the Network for Public Education, the leading advocacy group, founded by Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and other pro-public education leaders. The NPE’s mission is to “protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools and the education of current and future generations of students.”

As Diane Ravitch noted in a post about the Education Bloggers Network, “If you blog and if you support public education as a pillar of our democracy, consider joining the Education Bloggers Network.”

To become part of the Education Bloggers Network contact Jonathan Pelto, the founder and manager of the Network at jonpelto@gmail.com

(A complete directory of the Education Bloggers Network will be available soon)

Categories Network for Public Education, Supporting public schools

Victories for Candidates Endorsed by NPE

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2014 //
5

A number if the candidates endosed by the Network for Public Education won their races.

The biggest victory was Tom Torlakson’s success against the corporate reform money machine. That victory must be credited to Tom’s character and to the many teachers and parents who believed in him.

“Tom Torlakson wasn’t the only NPE endorsed candidate and educator to come out on top yesterday. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo won a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. Sherry is a former middle school science teacher, and the proud mother of a graduate of the Detroit Public Schools.

“Anne Duff, also a former teacher, not only won a seat on the Fort Wayne, Indiana Community Schools Board of Trustees, she was the top vote getter in the race for two open seats, garnering more votes than the incumbent board president.

“Victoria Steele and Randall Friese’s race for the Arizona House remains too close to call. We will update you on that race when more information becomes available.

“Congratulations to all of the NPE endorsed candidates, those who won elections and those who did not. Passionate educators, advocates and politicians who support keeping our public schools public need to continue to run for office, at all levels. We must spread our positive message, and work together to change the national conversation about public education, from the inside out.”

Categories Network for Public Education

NPE Endorses Candidates from Across the Country

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2014 //
6

The Network for Public Education supports candidates who are dedicated to public education. We respond to requests for our support by sending questionnaires to all candidates in the race. We review their responses and endorse those who pledge to improve our public schools, not close or privatize them, and to those who are critical of the status quo of high-stakes testing.

Here are the candidates we endorsed in 2014:

.
Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, California

Robert Garcia, Etiwanda School District, California

Michael Charney, Ohio State Board of Education, District 7

Dr. Randall Friese, Arizona House of Representatives, District 9

Sherry Gary Dagnogo, Michigan State Representative District 8

Anne Duff, Fort Wayne Community Schools Board, IN

Victoria Steele, Arizona House of Representatives, District 9

David Spring, Washington State House of Representatives, District 5

These are the only candidates NPE has endorsed.

In an earlier email, In an effort to highlight the growing scenario of big money trying to buy local school board races, NPE’s communications team rushed through an email alert highlighting several races around the country and used language which implied we had endorsed all of the candidates listed.

We deeply regret any doubt which our email may have caused, and immediately issued a retraction, but we understand not everyone may have seen the second email.

Categories Network for Public Education

NPE Endorses Tom Torlakson

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2014 //
8

Network for Public Education endorses Tom Torlakson for California State Superintendent

Network for Public Education is proud to endorse public education champion Tom Torlakson for California State Superintendent. NPE Board president Diane Ravitch says, “I hope that the voters choose Tom Torlakson, a veteran educator who will truly fight for the kids, their teachers, and their public schools.” The race in California is a test of democracy and a referendum on public education. Can the voters be hoodwinked by Big Lies and Big Money?

The 2014 election receiving staggering contributions from Big Outside Money is the State Superintendent race between the incumbent, former teacher and legislator Tom Torlakson and the challenger, former Wall Street and charter school executive Marshall Tuck. It’s no surprise that corporate reform heav y weights have come out in droves in support of the candidate with ties to Wall Street and charters.

The race has been flooded with more than 25 million dollars, with Tuck raising approximately $3.5 million more than Torlakson at latest count. Much of the corporate reform money for Tuck is flowing through a PAC deceptively named “Parents and Teachers for Tuck for State Superintendent 2014.”

Familiar corporate-ed reform philanthropists top the list of donors, including Eli Broad ($1,375,000); Walton daughters and heirs, Alice ($450,000) and Carrie ($500,000); Julian Robertson of the Robertson Foundation ($1,000,000) and Doris Fisher of the Donald and Doris Fisher Fund ($950,000). Ex NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed $250,000, as did Houston billionaire and DFER friend John Arnold and San Francisco venture capitalist and TFA Board member Arthur Rock.

Why so much money in this particular race?

Vergara.

Torlakson released a definitive statement within hours of the decision, and has appealed the ruling that could decimate tenure laws in California and beyond.

“All children deserve great teachers. Attracting, training, and nurturing talented and dedicated educators are among the most important tasks facing every school district, tasks that require the right mix of tools, resources, and expertise. Today’s ruling may inadvertently make this critical work even more challenging than it already is.

“While I have no direct jurisdiction over the statutes challenged in this case, I am always ready to assist the Legislature and Governor in their work to provide high-quality teachers for all of our students. Teachers are not the problem in our schools, they are the solution.”

Tuck not only supports the ruling, the plaintiffs in the case have endorsed his candidacy. Tuck offered his whole-hearted support for the decision at an event he recently attended with the Vergara plaintiffs.

“For too long, we have defended a broken system that fails to put the needs of our kids first. As State Superintendent, I will be an advocate for our students in Sacramento. I will immediately push to stop the defense of the onerous laws challenged by Vergara and will work with any and all stakeholders who are interested in building a better education future for our state. We owe it to our kids, and they deserve nothing less.”

Torlakson holds the slightest of leads among likely voters over Tuck, but with a third of the electorate still undecided, it’s anyone’s race. A field poll last week found an even tighter margin, with the candidates even at 28% and 44% of voters undecided!

Public education activist Robert Skeels says, “Tom Torlakson, AALA-endorsed candidate for California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, will fight to increase education funding, fight to restore funding for science, social studies, art, music, drama and sports and fight to reduce class size.”

This race is crucial. We simply cannot allow Big Outside Money to install a Wall Street and charter executive in the California State Superintendent’s seat. We simply cannot allow Big Outside Money to spread the Vergara verdict across the country.

Re-electing Tom Torlakson will send a powerful message to those that seek to privatize public education and undermine our nation’s teachers. It will send the message that our schools are not for sale.

Support The Network for Public Education

The Network for Public Education is an advocacy group whose goal is to fight to protect, preserve and strengthen our public school system, an essential institution in a democratic society.

Over the past year, donations to The Network for Public Education helped us put on our first National Conference, and the first PUBLIC Education Nation. In the coming year, we will hold more events, webinars, and work on the issues that our members and donors care about the most!

To become a Member or to Make a Donation, go to the NPE website and click on the PayPal link. We accept donations using PayPal, the most trusted site used to make on-line payments.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org

The Network For Public Education | P.O. Box 44200 | Tucson | AZ | 85733

Categories California, Network for Public Education

Jaime Franchi: Great Summary of Public Education Nation

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2014 //
5

Jaime Franchi of the Long Island Press provides here a succinct and accurate summary of the first ever Public Education Nation. The event was held on October 11 at the Brooklyn New School, a public school where 80% of the students opted out of state testing.

 

The discussions were lively and included people who were watching on live stream. This is the first of what we hope to make an annual event. We is the Network for Public Education.

 

Go to the website and  you can join (oops, I see it has not been updated to include links to the panels yet). Keep watching and you will be able to see our great presenters.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Testing

Rosa Rivera-McCutcheon on Race, Power, and Privilege at Public Education Nation

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2014 //
12

Rosa Rivera-McCutchen participated in a panel discussion about the Common Core and testing at Public Education on October 11 at the Brooklyn New School. She gave a powerful presentation about race, power, and privilege. The event was sponsored by the Network for Public Education. Read the transcript and see the video here.

She used Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail as the framework for her discussion:

“In thinking about my remarks for today’s panel, I thought it useful to draw upon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter from Birmingham City Jail because it’s an incredibly powerful way of framing the role of school leadership in the face of testing and the Common Core, and the impact they have on economically disadvantaged students and students of color. In the letter, King responds to 8 white clergymen who were supportive of desegregation, but were critical of the methods Dr. King was employing in Birmingham.

“The letter is meaningful in a number of historical ways, but it’s especially meaningful for me in the work I do as a researcher and as educator of future school leaders, because it really is powerful example of moral leadership in the face of not only troubling educational policy and also in thinking about well-intentioned resistance to the policies.”

“King wrote in the letter: “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”

“To King’s first point: collecting facts to determine whether injustices exist. Here, school leaders have to examine not just the intended goals of the policy; it is their responsibility to examine the application and the consequences of the policy.

So school leaders must ask themselves:

“How do the standards and the high stakes tests help my students? What is the impact on the curriculum? On the teachers? And equally important, school leaders must ask, are they equitable and just for all students?

“After determining, as all of us here know, that the answers to these basic yet critical questions are quite troubling, we move to the next step in King’s framework: negotiation.

“In the case of testing and the CC, it is clear that there have been numerous efforts to negotiate locally with the NYC Chancellors as well as with Commissioner John King and Secretary Arne Duncan. But when those negotiations become nothing more than stalling tactics and smoke in mirrors, as with the civil rights movement, school leaders must come to a point where they step away from the table and move closer towards direct action.

“But prior to the direct action, comes the third step, which Dr. King called, “self-purification.” This is arguably one of the most important steps in King’s framework for mounting a resistance. That’s because it demands that the resister, in this case the school leader, be reflective and consider the extent to which she or he has been complicit in perpetuating the oppression. They have to be honest with themselves about the extent to which their continued support of flawed policies has contributed to the harm. The school leader has to search inward to determine whether she or he is ready to face the consequences of resisting policies mandated from above, But beyond this, the school leaders particularly in communities that are more privileged have to look inward to determine whether their resistance will extend beyond their individual communities; whether they’re ready to engage in the kind equity work that will benefit ALL communities.”

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Network for Public Education, Testing

Wendy Lecker Speaks About the Problems with Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2014 //
3

This is the talk, both written and video, that Wendy Lecker gave about charter schools at Public Education Nation in Brookyn on October 11. The event was sponsored by the Network for Public Education at the Brooklyn New School. Please read/watch. Lecker was terrific.

Categories Charter Schools, Network for Public Education

Sarah Jaffe: The Resurgence of Public Education Nation

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2014 //
6

Sarah Jaffee attended the October 11 meeting of Public Education Nation in Brooklyn, convened by the Network for Public Education, and she saw the emergence of a new and vital spirit of resistance and dedication to public education.

 

She noted the well-known bloggers and advocates on the stage and in the crowd, but the show-stopper, she said, was a student activist from Newark named Tanaisa Brown.

 

Tanaisa Brown of the Newark Student Union perhaps best set the tone for the day when she told the crowd that the movement needs to have a central message, a central idea. “Remember that there’s other people fighting for the same causes that you are,” she said. While each location has its own specific fights – in Newark, she noted, they’re fighting against the “One Newark” plan being imposed by Chris Christie and his appointed superintendent, Cami Anderson – the movement, she suggested, needs a positive vision to anchor it.

 

“We want community schools,” she said. “Not a community school that is now a charter school, but a school that is embedded in the community and helps out the parents, the teachers, and anyone else who lives there that can benefit from wraparound services at those schools.”

 

This idea came up again and again throughout the day. It is no longer enough to simply say no to the top-down reforms, high-stakes tests, charter schools and school closings. It is no longer even enough to strike, to hold dramatic actions, to speak out. The movement, the day seemed to suggest, needs to take the next step and figure out what it is for.

 

Tanaisa is an articulate representative of students. And she is right. Saying no is not enough. But she also knows that you can’t begin to build positive change until the negative forces now crushing students, teachers, administrators, and public schools are stopped. Cami’s “One Newark” must be stopped, and students are trying their best to stop it. It is hard to climb when someone keeps cutting out the rungs on the ladder beneath you. It is hard to make progress when someone keeps beating you with a whip and threatening your job, your income, your pension, your reputation.

 

Perhaps Jitu Brown said it simplest when he said that we can’t work an inside-outside strategy. We must directly confront and block the damaging movement that calls itself “reform.” Closing schools is not reform, it destroys families and communities. Jitu Brown and his group Journey for Justice are bringing civil rights complaints against the school-closing, privatization “reforms” in New Orleans, Newark, and Chicago.

 

When Tanaisa Brown was asked for her own vision, she said she would like to go to a school that had the arts, that had dance and music. She would like to go to a school that had foreign languages and a library. She would like a school that offered the liberal arts.

 

That doesn’t sound radical or crazy or far out. Why is that so far out of reach for students in cities like Newark and Detroit and Philadelphia? Why?

 

We must continue to stop what is wrong and we must continue to fight for what is right.

 

 

 

 

Categories Network for Public Education, Newark, Resistance, Students

Today is Public Education Nation! Show Up or Livestream

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2014 //
4

Today, the Network for Public Education is sponsoring Public Education Nation.

Sponsored by you!

610 Henry Street in Brooklyn.

All the details are on our website: http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/

PUBLIC Education Nation will deliver the conversation the country has been waiting for. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn, you can still watch beginning at NOON EDT. PUBLIC Education Nation will be livestreamed on the web on the afternoon of Saturday, October 11, from the auditorium of Brooklyn New School, a public school. To watch click on to www.schoolhouselive.org.

We have waited too long for that seat at someone else’s table. This time, the tables are turned, and we are the ones setting the agenda.There will be four panels focusing on the most critical issues we face in our schools. The event will conclude with a conversation between Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown.

Testing and the Common Core: New York Principal of the Year Carol Burris will lead a discussion with educators Takeima Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja.

Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them: Chicago teacher Xian Barrett will moderate a panel featuring education professor Yohuru Williams, Hiram Rivera of the Philadelphia Student Union, and a representative of the Newark Student Union.

Charter Schools: North Carolina writer and activist Jeff Bryant will host a discussion that will include New Orleans parent activist Karran Harper Royal, New York teacher and blogger Gary Rubinstein, and Connecticut writer and activist Wendy Lecker.

Authentic Reform Success Stories: The fourth panel will be led by Network for Public Education executive director Robin Hiller and will include New York teacher and activist Brian Jones, and author of Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools, Greg Anrig.

Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, In Conversation: The event will finish off with a conversation between leading community activist Jitu Brown and Diane Ravitch, who will talk about where we are in building a movement for real improvement in our schools. This event will be broadcast live on the web, and can be viewed from anywhere in the world, at no cost. No registration is required. If you happen to be in the New York area, you can join the studio audience at the Brooklyn New School, at 610 Henry St. Brooklyn, for the live event. The Network for Public Education is hosting this event. It is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Walton or Bloomberg foundations. It is sponsored by YOU, each and every one of the people who care about our children’s future. Can you make a small donation to help us cover the expense of this event? We are determined to create the space not ordinarily given to voices like these. But we need your participation. Please donate by visiting the NPE website and clicking on the PayPal link. A live-stream of the event will be available on Saturday, Oct. 11, starting at Noon Eastern time, (9 am Pacific time) at http://www.schoolhouselive.org.

WE ARE MANY. THERE IS POWER IN OUR NUMBERS. TOGETHER WE WILL SAVE OUR SCHOOLS.

Categories Network for Public Education, Supporting public schools
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